


Bluebottles

by orange_crushed



Category: Alice (2009)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-15
Updated: 2011-04-15
Packaged: 2017-10-18 03:03:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/184298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orange_crushed/pseuds/orange_crushed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a future in this feeling.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bluebottles

"There ain't no lover like the one I've got,  
ain't no lover like the one I've got.  
She and I have a brand new start."  
-Little Joy

 

Happiness used to come in a bottle.

"Now it comes from a popcorn tin," says Alice. "Woo." She hands it to him and rests the drinks on the coffee table. "Scooch over."

They're watching an old Grace Kelly movie on television, in black and white, and according to Alice the thin girl on the screen married a prince and became a princess. She says it idly but there's nothing idle about her own close brush with royalty. He glances over just for a second, just to read what she's thinking. Regret? He hopes not. Maybe a touch of nostalgia for finer manners. Expensive presents. Well, alright, he's not in command of all the details. Either way he'd understand. He watches her. She gulps down a handful of cheese-dusted popcorn and laughs with her mouth halfway open.

"You're the perfect woman," Hatter tells her sincerely. She stares at him sideways in suspiciously pleased surprise, settles against him, kisses him with faintly orange lips. He rests his chin on top of her head, pets her hair, leans down to murmur into her ear. "It's an unexpected bonus that you're cheddar-flavored."

Sometimes happiness tries to smother him with a pillow during the commercial breaks, but he can live with that.

 

 

He didn't peddle anything he didn't try himself: a twisted honesty but an honesty nonetheless. Hard thing to hold on to, honesty. But there'd been joy, surprise, wonder, all corked up and ready to sell. Optimism, peacefulness. Enlightenment. A particularly expensive draught, that, and hard as hell to come by.

"There's just one thing I don't understand," says Carol one night, over the risotto. Hatter feels a little burst of amusement, because really, one thing? At the moment it feels like there are only a half-dozen things on this planet he can even pretend to understand. He thinks _flamingo-Jabberwocky-department of motor vehicles-renter's insurance-community college_ and looks over at Alice, whose face is also twitchy with held-in laughter. He understands that. This. She's holding his hand under the table.

"What's that ?"

"Why she always calls you _Hatter_ ," Carol wonders. "David is such a lovely name. Do you mind being called David ?"

"Not in the least." He gives her a Charming Smile. Charming Smile Number Seventy-Two, for use only on girlfriend's mums. "You can call me anything you like. Just don't call me late to-" he begins, and Alice kicks him in the ankle. As tenderly as she can manage. "Lovely dinner, Carol."

"Thank you." She glances to her daughter. "Is it a nickname ?"

"It's because he wears a _hat_ ," Alice deadpans, her eyes innocent-wide. Her mother just stares at her, and Hatter laughs silently into his napkin until he chokes on a piece of carrot and has to be thumped on the back a few times for caution's sake.

Later, they do the dishes.

"You're damaging the merchandise," he complains, when she sprays him a little with the hose attachment. She does it again and giggles and he hugs her with wet hands until she shrieks. Somewhere in the apartment, Carol is smiling and turning the volume up on _Cold Case_ and wondering with a slightly guilty conscience if that hour Alice spent drooling at a construction site involved any blunt-force trauma to the head. "Ah, you're in a very wet dress again," he says, without letting go of her waist. "Your people must've been mermaids. If you look far back enough."

"Mm."

"Mm, you agree, or mm-" he leans down, pauses just as he sweeps his lips against hers. "Just good old _mm_. Either would do." He's still talking when Alice pulls him down, parts her lips and erases his internal monologue for an achingly long minute. She tastes like the mint she slipped under her tongue after dinner. Like warm raspberries and delight.

He thinks about them sometimes, pure feelings sold and drunk: the giddy highs and vicious lows and plain cold emptiness afterward. At night he rolls onto his side and stares at the curve of her shoulder under the sheet. It's just an outline but it turns his insides over and over like a millwheel. It's the most genuine thing he's ever felt. It's immense and huge and real. In daylight he cracks terrible jokes and puts his coat over her lap in the movie theatre and lets her pay for parking, but in the dark he lines up bottles in his mind and smashes them one by one until he can sleep.

"Are your dreams as strange as mine ?" she asks, in her drowsy Saturday-morning voice, pressed against his collarbone. "I keep dreaming about rabbits."

"Good for a stew, rabbits," he says, and doesn't answer.

 

 

In the mornings while she teaches, he walks the city block by block. His destination is usually the public library. You can learn a lot about a world from its library, ask the damn Dodo. Hatter reads the encyclopedia annuals and leafs through yellowing magazines and reads novels in the worn plastic armchairs by the public computers. He reads Jane Austen and Stephen King and a book of fairy tales hidden between the covers of _War and Peace_. "Enrichment," he tells Alice. "Plenty of room up there, got to fill it with something new. Expanding my mind."

"Expanding." Her eyes are soft and she rests her hip against his, but her smile's a touch more wicked than usual. She grins and twists her index finger through one of the curls above his forehead. "You're going to need a bigger hat," she says. He laughs and pulls her closer. There's a future in this feeling. It's drinking straight happiness from a glass that doesn't empty.

"Cross that bridge when I come to it," says Hatter.


End file.
